Assistant area wildlife manager Rob Rabasco said the only question he hadn't been asked yet was, "Will you shoot a deer for me?" and he added, the way things were progressing, he ex-pected that one next.

Cash registers were ringing at area merchants. Many restaurants started serving hunters breakfasts at 5 a.m. Saturday and were swamped with customers in freshly washed and air-dried orange suits.

Because of the one deer limit, some reporting stations indicated they doubted they'd see many registrations Saturday morning because people were waiting to take that first shot.

Nobody wanted to see the season end before noon.

Employees at Delaney's Sports Center ordered pizza in Friday afternoon. They were just too busy to leave for lunch, or dinner as it were.

Hubbard County was hosting numerous craft shows and events for non-hunters.

The Dorset Liquor Store was hosting a high-end wine-tasting party.

In the first state wolf hunt, Delaney's reported selling a couple licenses to some of the lucky 3,600 lottery winners, but co-owner Debbie Lempola said she had not heard of anyone who was going wolf hunting.

An abnormally warm winter left the deer population in good shape, DNR officials had predicted.

Hubbard County officials have been responding to deer-vehicle crashes many times a day for the last two weeks.